This is all beside the point. He shot an innocent with candies and has not been arrested for it, Mostly because of a complacent police dept. There's an old saying that goes:

After "I-am-sorry" was born, nobody ever got beaten up again.

Apologies won't bring the dead back to life. Zimmerman must be tried for it and, if found guilty, he should be jailed for a lonnnnnng time.

Agreed. It's exposing racism and impunity.

A telephone that can't reliably place or receive calls (thanks to an exclusive partner, AT&T).
An Internet/multimedia tablet that doesn't support Flash. Or has USB/HDMI ports.

Yes, Apple gets away with a lot. Right now, they can sell a fridge to an eskimo.

Fascinating story. I first heard of Lake Vostok some years ago when watching an episode of Horizon and I remember how curious I became about the possibility of new and strange forms of life in those waters. Bless the BBC for keeping such an enlightening programme on air for this long.

Exactly! Mod parent up.

I think the Archos 5 uses resistive screen. But I agree. It could have been anything else. Even the greater proximity to God.

I own an Archos 5 IMT, which, although doesn't use e-ink, has a touchscreen. Recently, during my first flight with it, I noticed the screen had become completely unresponsive. I was forced to put it aside. The device was working properly the day before, and was back to normal again when I tried it again at the hotel. While not a sample size as large as yours, it's meaningful to me because my device has always worked properly with the exception of that flight.

There might be some component inside these gadgets that is either:

a) affected by the pre-flight scanners.

or

b) the in-flight instruments.

Exactly year ago, when HP released the Slate 500 (the predecessor to this Slate 2), there was a lot excitement among Tablet PC enthusiasts regarding the device. the device had been hinted by Ballmer at CES, then touted by HP, then mysteriously killed by the company, then suddenly resurrected by HP. Once released, the device sold out remarkably quick and became a source of frustration to those that awaited months for production to catch up with demand. It was obvious that HP had underestimated the Slate 500's appeal. The device got mostly good reviews from its owners. But at at treat point, HP had already shifted focus to the Touchpad, which got all attention, marketing and resources.

If you needed dual-boot capability, MS Office (or LibreOffice, like me!), Winamp, Notepad++, VirtualBox, Firefox and other Windows apps; and you happened to be into tablet computing; the Slate 500 offered you a platform to both consume media and do real work on the go....with all the amenities of laptops such USB, HDMI, SD Card slot, Bluetooth, etc. Truth be told, not cheap as a netbook, but you'd get a business-grade machine with decent durability, a docking station and a touchscreen.

Fast forward 12 months to this Slate 2. Intel convinced HP to "upgrade" (this word, plus "innovate" have truly lost their meaning) from the original Atom Z540 used on the Slate 500, to the slower Atom Z670. Not only is the CPU inside the "upgraded" Slate 2 quite slower, but its integrated graphics suffers from some crippling driver-induced sickness that prevents the GPU from even performing at the levels of the year-old Slate 500. Not only the new HP Slate 2 got beat by its predecessor from a year ago, but it also arrived too late, as Fujitsu released a slate of similar specs (the Q550) about 6 months ago.

I own 2 Tablet PCs (I'm handwriting this from one of them right now), but if you want to try this platform (this is not a toy), do yourself a favor and get a Tablet PC from someone else (the Samsung Series 7 Slate looks good). HP has lost its way.

The TabletPC platform failed because of the lack of promotion. Microsoft and the OEMs (Dell, HP, Lenovo, Gateway, etc) have never -- to this day -- to advertise Tablet PCs. I have never seen a Tablet PC ad anywhere. Ever! Not even in brochures mailed by the aforementioned companies! They don't even appear on the Home Page of those OEMs. They've bastardized the technology from the start. Then they waited for someone with more vision and interest in it to fully capitalize on the idea. This someone turned out to be Apple, who, since Day-1, has made enormous fanfare about the platform. Let's face it, Apple's remarkable marketing machine could convince an eskimo to buy an iFridge. Kudos to them.

Shame on Microsoft and friends for their utter incompetence at showing people that they have had tablets for a decade and what such machines were like. And before someone starts bitching about the Tablet PC's initial reliance on a stylus (pen), know that Apple is currently working on a stylus for a future iPad. Once it comes out, people will think that Apple invented the tablet....and the stylus! Brilliant! :-D

- Proudly owner of TabletPCs (TC1100 and TM2) for 5 years.

the problem is that a 2-min wait for a boot and a 10-sec wait to launch a browser is not acceptable to many people that have used decent computers before. besides, Flash does not run well on Atom processors. that's a fact. and HP was already bragging about Flash support on the Slate, which, although a nice plus, would leave people with a bitter taste in their mouth when they tried fullscreen playback.

i have the excellent HP tm2 tablet with an Intel SU7300 and 4Gb of RAM running Win7. after tweaking my Services and Startup progs, it still takes it a whole minute to start the tablet and launch IE (takes longer to lauch FF with all my addons. this kind of wait isnt a big deal to me, but the people who have smartphones or have used the iPad, are expecting tablets with 2-sec boots. i would not buy an iPad for the very same reason i would not buy an Atom Slate running Win7: it would be too expensive (HP was planning a $550 price tag) for the half-baked computer experience it would provide.